Engadget Mobile has posted a link to a forum in which an individual claims to have issues with the oleophobic coating on his iPhone 3GS wearing off.

Is it possible? Sure, anything is possible. Is it likely this will happen to you? Highly unlikely. There could be a few explanations here: could be a simple case of user abuse, perhaps it is a stroke of bad luck for the owner who happened to get a defective iPhone, or maybe the screen needs to be cleaned!

Whatever the case may be - there is no reason to panic. This is a single report - TiPb has found no other cases of users having this very issue, even within the 10 page thread linked above. Nobody really knows what really happened here so there’s no need to worry. Start to worry when flocks of people start having issues with it.

Until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy your iPhone 3GS.

[Via Engadget]

The UK’s Telegraph ran an article recently with a headline stating “Overheating iPhone 3GS: Apple blames the weather”… that could be a tad misleading. The Telegraph cites an Apple knowledge base article, last updated June 25, 2009, that warns about leaving the iPhone 3GS in hot places or using it under hot conditions, and shows a screenshot of the iPhone’s temperate warning screen,

The problem is, as longtime TiPb readers know, it’s the same knowledge base article that’s been up since the introduction of the iPhone 3G in 2008, the update merely adding in the newly launched iPhone 3GS.

So, while the iPhone 3GS may indeed have overheating problems — though we’re not experiencing any yet — saying Apple blames the issue on heating is, as mentioned, a tad misleading.

In any event, we’re more interested in whether or not our readers are experiencing iPhone 3GS overheating issues, and if so, what are you doing on the device when you experience them, and are you running a jailbroken device?

[via Engadget]

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Read the rest of this entry »

CNNMoney.com News, Stocks, and Video [free - iTunes link] for iPhone (and iPod touch) is the latest big name entrant into the App Store financial news and media space. Leveraging their brand and resources, it looks like CNN.com’s mobile site while working like an iPhone app. iPhone-likeness aficionados may take a few blinking moments to adjust, but it’s a deliberate design decision that will no doubt appeal to the massive user-base of CNN.com’s existing web services.

TiPb had a chance to test drive CNNMoney, and from a pure content standpoint it’s impressive. When you first launch, you’re greeted with the News dashboard. At the very top is a rotating stock-ticker, then a sampling of latest news, stocks, videos, etc. Users can easily check or uncheck specific content options, and drag them around to re-sequence them in whatever order they prefer. (I immediately put technology news at the top).

The content itself isn’t merely a feed. In an effort to give mobile users the best experience possible, both statistical measures like popularity and hand-picked curation on the part of CNN Money’s editors determine which stories and in what order they’re made available to the iPhone app. Also, stories loaded into the app are cached locally in case you need to go offline (i.e. on an airplane).

The free app is supported by advertising, but when there is no appropriate or available ad, rather than filler or “house ads”, CNN Money cuts users a much-appreciated break and removes the ad space completely.

My Stocks is pre-populated with a few high profile favorites but can be easily customized. Tapping a stock brings up a details and graph view. As is typical with online stock reporting, quotes are delayed roughly 15 min. Once you’ve viewed a stock quote, a new section pops up on your dashboard News tab called Last 3 Quotes, and as the title indicates, it keeps track of your most recently views stocks.

Videos shows thumbnails and a brief description of the story. CNN Money typically produces over a dozen unique video segments a day, and they load quickly and look good on the iPhone.

The Add/Remove tab lets you do the content re-arrangement mentioned previously.

It should be noted that while CNN Money is compatible with iPhone 3.0, and the system-wide Copy functionality works fine, it doesn’t yet support push notification alerts, or automatic HTTP video stream optimization. Hopefully we’ll see these in an update. Along with a good James Earl Jones rendition of “This is CNN”.

Screenshots after the break…

Read the rest of this entry »

OH (original hacker, yo!) George Hotz has posted the RC2 version of his iPhone 3GS jailbreak tool, purplera1n. Along with other improvements, the new version supports Vista, Windows 7, and supports 64-bit.

If any of the above interests you, and you’re a responsible adult who understands the risks involved, hit the link below and check it out. Jarrrr!

[On the iPhone]

Dave wrote in asking TiPb how he could email full size, full quality photos from his iPhone 3GS. Sounds simple, right, but by default if you go into Camera Roll choose one or more photos, and then choose Share, the iPhone will crunch the image(s) down to 800×600.

If, however, you use the copy command, then exit, go to email, and use paste to insert the images, the iPhone will keep them at their full 2048×1526 size.

Of course, increased resolution means increased file size, in our test case 816KB vs. 104KB for a single photo, so keep that in mind before trying to attach 10 full res photos and then wondering why it takes forever for the email to send and your buddy’s tiny free-mail account bounces it back for exceeding maximum capacity…

But for people like Dave who just need to get a few, high quality shots off via email, this looks like a great work around.

[Geek.ThinkUnique.org via DaringFireball]

There has been so much jailbreak/unlock news as of late, it’s enough to make your head spin. So let’s end this week with two more tidbits of news from the community.

The Dev Team has released yet another demo video. This time they are showing off their iPhone 3GS 3.0 ultrasn0w unlock. Please keep in mind for the unlock to work you cannot update to 3.1 — and yes, this includes the 3.1 beta.

It’s pretty well known in the jailbreak community that the Dev Team delayed releasing their iPhone 3GS jailbreak for their own reasons. Well someone else has stepped up to the plate to bring you a iPhone 3GS jailbreak alternative. iPhone original hacker, George Hotz, has released purplera1n which is currently only available to Windows users (not Windows 7 though). Mac users don’t panic, your version is coming soon!

In his latest blog post, not only does George explain the steps you must take to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS, he is pretty vocal on why he has decided to release purplera1n to the public.

Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week. Also your purplera1nyday files ensure that you can always get back to a jailbroken state, so if you have it it’s just a matter of tools.

Has this brought back to life a heated rivalry? It’s time to sit back, relax, and jailbreak!

And as always, TiPb and staff take no responsibility for any bricking, failures, security risks, etc… that may occur during the jailbreak process. Proceed at your own risk!

[Not iPhone-friendly video -- we know -- please encourage them to post video to YouTube in the future. Thanks to everyone who sent these in!]

Turns out that if you jailbreak your iPhone you remove most of the Apple’s security protections — 80% to be exact — and are vulnerable to attacks. At least according to Charlie Miller:

“If you care about security, don’t use a jailbroken iPhone,”

Miller, speaking at SyScan in Singapore, believes that by jailbreaking you open your device some major risks. The operating system on an iPhone is basically a watered down version of Mac OS X. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Macs, Mac OS X is the latest OS that Apple computers run. Macs are generally known for pretty risk-free machines with a few exceptions. Those exceptions being Java, Adobe Flash, and PDF files. The major risk on the iPhone is opening your device up to any application available on Cydia/Icy. iPhones will generally only run applications that are digitally signed by Apple, this is not the case when jailbroken. So if you don’t know what you are installing, there is a possibility you can be in for a world of hurt.

Of course just a few hours ago Rene told you about the huge vulnerability within the iPhone’s SMS application that Charlie found, so nothing is completely safe.

Does this scare you away from jailbreaking your iPhone? Perhaps you are thinking about doing a restore and going legit from now on? Let us know if this warning from Charlie sways you to avoid the jailbreaking life!

[Via Macworld]

The latest piece of hardware to come out of Cupertino, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, has claimed the honor of being ranked number 1 in Consumer Reports new smartphone ratings. Now does this come as a surprise to anyone? In all actuality, it was pretty close within the top 8 devices: (Device/Overall Score):

• iPhone 3GS (16 GB) 73
• iPhone 3G (8 GB) 70
• Samsung Omnia 69
• BlackBerry Storm 69
• HTC G1 69
• BlackBerry Bold 69
• Samsung Epix 69
• Palm Pre 67

While the race to top honors was anything but a blow-out, the iPhone shined when it came to it’s 3.5-inch widescreen display, top of the line multimedia, ease of navigation, web browsing, and battery life. Devices like the Palm Pre, among others, beat out Apple’s gem when it came to messaging along with superior multitasking capabilities.

So the iPhone ranked number 1 this year as it did almost two years ago, congratulations goes out to Apple for a continuing job well done!

Update - We love our friends over at PreCentral.net so to be fair we wanted to let it be known the Palm Pre did not come in last place, we simply just cut the list off after the Pre. For the full list please visit the Consumer Reports site.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

We already knew Apple sold — and upsold — 1 million iPhone 3GS devices opening weekend, but an internal memo shows just how big an event that was for AT&T. Massive summer blockbuster, thy name is iPhone 3GS.

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

Now imagine how many they would have sold if MMS and tethering were ready, and they’d expanding their network to better handle iPhone traffic.

(What, the dead horse had it coming!)

[Via MacDailyNews, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]